The worlds largest mystery

December 31, 1982, the
Hudson River Valley, 25 miles north of New York City. Hundreds of
witnesses, including police officer Andy Sadoff, report sighting a
V-shaped object in the sky. It is enormous—at least the width of a
football-field—and moving very slowly and close to the ground. It
is completely silent, and only gets noticed because of its very
bright, strobing lights. A large wave of sightings occur again in
March of 1983, with hundreds of eyewitness reports. For six years,
until 1989, the “Hudson Valley Boomerang” is seen by more than
5,000 recorded witnesses, spanning the states of New York &
Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and even Massachusetts.
They include lawyers, engineers, housewives, mechanics, and even
dozens of police officers—including the chief of the Danbury,
Connecticut police department. Later, Dr J Allen Hynek, Philip J
Imbrogno & Bob Pratt write a book on the phenomenon titled Night Siege: The Hudson
Valley UFO Sightings, published in 1998 by Llewellyn
Publications.

Then it happens again.

November 29, 1989—the
Berlin Wall has just fallen. In the small European
country of Belgium, an estimated 13,500 people are witness to an
extraordinarily large, triangular-shaped craft moving overhead in
the direction of Germany. It is flying very low, and would go unseen
if not for its blinding lights. Written reports are filed by 2,600
individuals, and a photograph taken by one eyewitness is later
computer-enhanced and verified to be genuine. Sightings continue
until April 1990. The event is dubbed “The Belgian UFO Wave”.

And again.

May 25, 1995—over Taiban, New
Mexico. A craft 300 to 400 feet long, lit by bright,
strobing lights is sighted at 30,000 feet by the crew of Las Vegas
bound America West Flight 564. The sighting location was
coincidentally, right between Cannon Air
Force base and the NASA high
altitude research facility in Fort Sumner. The flight crew
immediately contacts the Albuquerque FAA Air Route Traffic Control
Center, and you can listen to a recording of their conversation by
clicking the play button below.

and then the biggest sighting of them all.

March 13, 1997—Phoenix, Arizona. In an
incident now called the “Phoenix Lights”,
thousands of eyewitnesses report seeing a vast, triangular-shaped
craft in the night sky. It is completely silent, and illuminated by
several bright lights. Among the eyewitnesses is Fife Symington, the
governor of Arizona. The craft moves slowly over the state, and is
also seen in Nevada and the Mexican state of Sonora.

The continuing reports from all over the country prompt the
National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS),
funded by billionaire Robert Bigelow, to investigate. In 2001,
they deliver a report on the flying triangles, dubbing them “Big
Black Deltas” or BBDs. You
can click here to download the
report in PDF format.

January 8, 2008—Stephenville, Texas. Residents,
including a constable, the chief of police, a pilot, and a former
air-traffic controller, report seeing a large object hovering
about 300 feet over the ground. Some eyewitnesses claim it to be a
mile long and a half-mile wide; all maintain it is very large,
very quiet, and equipped with a strobing light configuration which
doesn’t match any conventional aircraft.

so what in the hell is this thing?

The military's secret romance with quiet sensor laden airships began
long ago during the tumultuous Vietnam war. DARPA, The Defense
Advanced Research Projects agency (then called ARPA) sponsored
several design studies along with the Air Force's Cambridge research
lab.

In 1964 a secret airship project named Silent
Joe was
designed for remote operations over the Ho Chi Mihn trail using
infra red and acoustic sensors. It was quickly followed by Silent
Joe II, POBOL, HASKV, and then POBOL-S,
which was designed to watch targets below from an altitude of
70,000 feet for seven days. And this was in 1974!

You might ask why the military kept pursuing airship technology
when they have so many other options available. Its because the
airship is the only technology that can provide very long term,
silent, surveillance, the holy grail of military intelligence.
This is the central reason behind my belief that these giant
phantoms of the night belong to the department of defense.

Now unfortunately all the publicly available historical
data on airship programs ends there, but the story doesn't. In
2009 the army decided they needed a giant surveillance airship for
the battlefield and called the proposal the LEMV (long-endurance
multi-intelligence vehicle). In 2010 Northrop
Grumman announced the contract to build this vehicle with a
first flight in 2011. While this development isn't proof positive
of a similar "classified" program, it goes a long way towards
proving the critical need for such a platform exists.